Tuesday, October 7, 2008

The doctor with no mercy

Well, I went back to the doctor last Thursday. I was hoping he would say I was thin enough now. Didn't happen. He said I was still overweight and needed to lose some more fat from around my waist. He said I should get down to a 34 waist, instead of the 36 I'm fitting now. I thought 36 was pretty darned good! I figured if I got down to 36, I would be about right. Nope. It didn't even seem to be a close decision on his part.

At least he was impressed with the amount of weight I've lost since June. He did a sort of double take when he looked at what the chart said then and what it says now, and then asked if that was real, which it is. Well, mostly. According to his chart, I've lost 40 lbs, but when I got weighed in June, I had my shoes on and lots of stuff in my pockets, so I had probably really lost more like 35 to 37 lbs, but either way, I think he was surprised (and now my weight really is down to 197, so I really have lost 40 lbs). He didn't waste a lot of time telling me how good I had done though. It was all about how much more I need to do.

Bummer. I was hoping I could start to loosen up a little on the calorie control. His view was that I should just stay at about 2000 calories a day and keep losing weight until it stabilizes, which means, my intake would stay at 2000 forever. That's a little depressing. My view was that if I keep running 4 or 5 miles a day, I could get down to say 175-180 and then start eating more. I guess that's a false view. Those chocolate milk shakes and boysenberry pies are going to have to be few and far between for the rest of my life to maintain the kind of thin-ness he's recommending. I'm not sure if I can actually do that. I guess its a matter of degree. Moderation. Oh, well, he seemed more concerned about sodium than sugar, so maybe some desserts won't be so bad if they are high sugar and low sodium. I don't know. Making this a new life style for the rest of my life is really not easy.

Actually, though, after some checking, the doctor's theory about just letting my weight stabilize really doesn't work. I am keeping to an arbitrarily low 2000 calories a day, which is a level that I picked that would cause me to lose weight fairly fast (2 lbs per week - recommended maximum). And with the amount of running I have been doing, according to various formulas, if I keep up that level of exercise and that low level of calorie intake, my weight probably would not stabilize until I got down to under 100 lbs, which is totally ridiculous. So, I'll go for about 180 or 175 as a target, with the 34 waist, and see how things look at that point.

2 comments:

Wow! That seems a little off to me. Now granted that my husband has put on a little weight and would tell you that he needs to lose some off the middle. But, he is 6'1, with a different bone structure than you and he weighs around 18x? and wears a 34 inch waisted pant. He can do 33 sometimes, but 34 is comfortable. Now, maybe I am just used to the way I know you, but it seems like if you were the size of my husband you might not be looking healthy anymore?